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THREE pet owners were walking their 15 dogs in the early morning near a municipal hall in the Bratislava district of Čunovo when their loud barking disturbed several locals who called the police.When police approached the three they discovered that the primary owner of the dogs, a 41-year-old woman, did not have her ID with her and wanted to take her to the police station. At that time, the woman's 17-year-old daughter ordered Bibi, one of the dogs, to bite, the SME daily wrote. "The 17-year-old daughter made the whole situation more dramatic by ordering the Doberman to 'tear!'" Police Spokesman Peter Pleva told SME. "The dog immediately attacked one of the officers, biting into his right leg. It was only under the threat of a gun that that woman was forced to recall the dog," Pleva said. "The wound on the officer's thigh was treated but the dog was not vaccinated, so the officer had to undergo a preventive vaccination treatment against rabies," said the spokesman. The accused, however, tell a different story of what happened. "The policemen were aggressive. The dog did not attack on the order of my daughter. It just defended me when the policemen violently pushed me into their car. The officer then took out his gun and was pointing it right at me as he drew it. Bibi is a calm, 17-year-old dog and was properly vaccinated just this April," the pet owner, unnamed, told SME. The police, however, insist on their version. All three people were taken to the police station and officers are charging them with attacking a public official. "An investigator is already dealing with the case. They face a penalty of one to five years. But the dog can be considered a deadly weapon and the criminal code allows for the penalty to be up to eight years in the event of an armed attack," said Pleva.

SereďLegionnaire statue wanted after 40 years

A LEGIONNAIRE statue that has been buried for 40 years is now wanted but is proving hard to find. The Water Castle civic group from the western Slovak town of Sereď has been digging, but the work has so far failed to turn up the sandstone statue. "A legionnaire statue more than three metres tall was one of the characteristic features of Sereď for 30 years. It was raised 75 years ago in homage to the fighters who defended Slovakia against the army of the Hungarian republic. In the 1950s it started to get in the way for ideological reasons," Rastislav Petrovič, the chairman of the group, told the SME daily."One morning the inhabitants of Sereď found an empty pedestal in the square [where the Legionnaire used to stand]. The [Communist] regime had it removed to the local army barracks. Half a year after the invasion of the Soviet troops [to former Czechoslovakia in 1968], they buried it in a hole near the Váh River," he said. Since then the statue has been lost from sight and the activists say that it would have been lost forever if there had not been a witness to the burial. "One day in the autumn of 1968 or in the spring of 1969 I went for a walk along the embankment with my children towards the property where we were building a house. I saw them throw the Legionnaire statute from a truck into a hole in the ground. Every time I passed the place with my children after that I would tell them about it," Mária Tvarožková, the witness, told SME.She never told what she had seen to anyone else. Decades later, however, the Water Castle group organised a lecture about the Legionnaire statue. Tvarožková said she felt she "had to go".She told the group what she had seen and described the approximate area where the burial took place. The group immediately started a search equipped with a mechanical digger. "We were digging with an excavator but we did not find the statue. The search area is too large. In addition to that, it is an area that was once a river arm that was flooded many times. The search is also complicated by trees that were not been there before," Július Matis, deputy chairman of Water Castle, said. The group wants to start a new search in a few days. The municipal hall officials from Sereď say that they do not have the funds to help the group. However, they support the activists' efforts. "I support the activities of the members of the group but unfortunately we do not have money for the digging in our budget, I would be happy if they succeeded in the search," Sereď mayor Ján Lehota said.

THE STOLEN pigs might get to see the world.

photo: TASR

Michalovce171 pigs stolen

AN UNKNOWN thief stole 171 pigs from a feeder farm in the eastern Slovak village of Pusté Čemerné in Michalovce district. According to the state run news agency TASR, the perpetrator used a key stolen from the apparently unguarded gatehouse.

Východná Eiffel and Pisa towers in one garden

MARTIN Sabaka from the Východná village near Poprad has never left Slovakia but he has brought parts of the world to his own garden. There a Chinese pagoda stands close to the slanting Pisa tower, The Freedom Statue, and the Tower of London - complete with the Thames River. Sabaka, 80, said that his hobby fills his time in retirement and partly makes his unfulfilled dreams of travelling come true, as travelling the world during Communism was virtually impossible for most people. "It was not possible to travel the world as it is now, and so I brought the world to my garden," Sabaka told the SME daily. Because he always loved to read travel magazines and books, he decided to copy some of the most famous buildings and statues of the world once he retired. "I did not want to waste my time and so I found this hobby," he said. At first he made a Finnish sauna and then other buildings followed. To build these he uses wood, concrete, and glass bottles. Sabaka has a sense for detail. The Eiffel tower even has small figures of tourists looking out of the top floors and a little plastic boat floats down the Thames River. "I have plans to build more buildings, but my garden seems too small for the world," said Sabaka.

Lubina Raging pig bites man

A PIG crazed with rabies bit a man from the Lubina village in the Nové Mesto nad Váhom district in northern Slovakia. A hunter called to the scene then shot the pig, the SME daily wrote. Around 15 people had to be vaccinated because they came into contact with the pig before it was established that it was sick, the state-run news agency TASR wrote on July 6. Milan Ostrovský, the mayor of Lubina, said that the whole village was in quarantine. The pig attacked Miroslav Šidla, who was cutting grass with his father in a field behind their house.

Košice Homeless man bursts into flames

A HOMELESS man named Peter B from Košice caught fire as he made a spark shortly after inhaling chemical vapours.According to the state-run news agency TASR, the accident took place on July 7. Peter B suffered serious third-degree burns on 42 percent of his body. The 19-year-old patient is in the hospital with injuries mainly on his arms and torso. According to TASR he is in critical condition. Police Spokeswoman Jana Demjanovičová said that the young man was inhaling an unspecified chemical shortly before midnight and the vapours probably sparked into flames as he lit a cigarette.

19. Jul 2004 at 0:00

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